Mon September 10, 2012

Los Angeles VA Has Made Millions On Rental Deals

The 388-acre campus of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Los Angeles was donated to the federal government more than 100 years ago for use as a home for disabled veterans, but is no longer used for that purpose. In 2007, Building 209, pictured here, was designated as a place to house disabled homeless vets. It is currently abandoned.

The campus has more than a dozen long-term rental deals with various enterprises, most of which don't serve veterans. There's a private baseball stadium, storage for film sets and a laundry for Marriott Hotels. Meanwhile, other buildings sit abandoned.

The chapel on campus is abandoned and deteriorating. The 1900s-era building is a rare early-American, multidenominational site. It holds one chapel for Protestants and another for Catholics. The J. Paul Getty Museum provided a $75,000 grant in 2000 to support conservation planning, but no work has yet been done on the building.

R.W. Williams, 63, a Vietnam veteran, has been seeking medical treatment for a host of ailments, including PTSD, at the VA health center in Los Angeles. He is seen here on the campus near a mural honoring soldiers.

Conly Mims, 59, a Marine Corps veteran, is seen in the old trolley building. Mims participates in the Salvation Army Haven Program, which caters to veterans struggling with a variety of complex problems such as a shortage of housing and chronic medical issues.

The Old Soldiers Home in Los Angeles is seen in this photo from 1892. The land was donated to the VA by landholder Arcadia Bandini de Baker in 1887, who specified that it should be used to house wounded veterans.

The chapel, seen circa 1900, was used for religious services, weddings, substance abuse counseling and funeral rites by both veterans and members of the local community until a 1971 earthquake made the building unsafe for use. It is currently deteriorating, although the VA hopes to save it.

The campus of the VA Medical Center in West Los Angeles was donated to the federal government more than 100 years ago for use as a home for wounded veterans. Building 209, pictured here, was designated as a place to house disabled homeless vets in 2007, but the VA has yet to start renovations.

Carolina Winston Barrie is the great-great niece of Arcadia Bandini de Baker, who donated the land for the Los Angeles VA campus in 1887. Winston Barrie spent years trying to get the VA to maintain the intent of the gift. Instead, parts of the property have been leased to various commercial enterprises.

Nancy Pastor for NPR

Most Los Angeles residents only know the Veterans Affairs medical center in West Los Angeles as something they glimpse from their cars when they're on traffic-choked Wilshire Boulevard. From the road it looks like a park, but within the grounds is the largest medical facility in the VA's health care system.

The campus is also one of the most fought-over pieces of property in Los Angeles. The nearly 400 acres are in the middle of a densely populated and affluent part of the city. Given its location, the land has been coveted for commercial development. It's also been targeted as a perfect place to provide housing for some of the city's 8,000 homeless veterans.

The VA has had plans to create housing for disabled homeless vets for years. But so far, those plans have gone nowhere. Meanwhile, government documents show that the VA has made millions of dollars renting out chunks of the property to private enterprises.

Access To Care

Vet Floyd Summers regularly makes the 140-mile round-trip trek by train, bus and foot to the medical center for mental health treatments. He's been living in his truck parked in another county because he can't afford the gas to get to the VA.

Summers says he wanted to live right here on the West L.A. campus — and he has, for brief periods of time. The VA and some nonprofits offer transitional housing and emergency shelter. But Summers says nothing has worked out.

"I been trying to get housing for such a long time that sometime I wonder if anybody's hearing me or not," says Summers.

Suddenly, he provides a glimpse of why he's had trouble fitting into one of the established programs here. He abruptly stops talking. He scowls and looks around. He groans. It's hard to tell whether he's angry or afraid.

After a minute, he just picks up the conversation where he left off. This happens several times.

Summers hears voices. He has mood swings. His symptoms started during the Vietnam War when he was a 22-year-old Army recruit stationed in Germany.

"At that time I felt that something wasn't right with me," he says. "I felt that some things was real and some things wasn't real, as if I was hallucinating."

Summers is one of 11 veterans with severe mental disabilities who are suing the VA. They're represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of prominent Los Angeles law firms. Mark Rosenbaum, the legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, says they want permanent supportive housing on the West L.A. campus for mentally disabled veterans like Summers, so that they have "housing that has access to medical and psychiatric services. It's common sense."

Rosenbaum says his clients' severe mental disabilities make it next to impossible for them to access the treatment to which they're legally entitled.

"You can't get medical and psychiatric services if you're living in Skid Row and you're part of a cycle of homelessness."

Sharing The Land

Neither the VA nor the Justice Department would speak with NPR because of the lawsuit, even though part of it has been dismissed. But if you try to figure out their position from what they say and do, you may come away confused. For example, in a document responding to the lawsuit, the government contends that the VA has no authority and no funding to create housing. Yet there is long-term supportive housing for homeless disabled veterans now under construction at another VA facility in the Los Angeles area.

Then there's the history. At one time the solepurpose of the West L.A. campus was to house veterans. That began in the late 19th century, when a couple of prominent Californians donated the land to the federal government specifically to create a home for disabled soldiers.

Carolina Winston Barrie, 84, is the great-great-niece of one of the land donors, Arcadia Bandini de Baker. At one time, Winston Barrie was also part of the lawsuit, hoping to have her family's original deed enforced. She knows every inch of this place and what it used to be.

"This was a fully functional city within the county of Los Angeles," says Barrie. "It had everything — a post office, the trolley station." She says there were "150 acres under cultivation. Orange trees all over the place. You can't see an orange tree anymore."

But what you can see, if you know where to look — and what really bothers Barrie — are the enterprises here that have nothing to do with helping veterans.

On a drive through the campus, she points out the stadium where the UCLA baseball team plays, the 20-acre athletic complex for an exclusive private school, the laundry facility for Marriott Hotels, and the place where 20th Century Fox stores sets. On the far side of the property were parking lots full of rental cars and school buses.

The West Los Angeles VA has made more than a dozen of these long-term rental deals. Most of them have nothing to do with services for veterans.

That's led Rep. Henry Waxman to conclude that "the West L.A. VA was in business for itself." The VA campus is in Waxman's district. He and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have been trying to protect the property from commercialization for years. During the Bush administration, there were proposals to use the land for condos, office towers, a shopping mall. At the time, Waxman went to talk to then-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson.

"He told me when I went to meet with him that he was a real estate developer, and this was prime real estate, and we could make a lot of money by commercializing it, selling it off and letting people build whatever they wanted to build," recalls Waxman. "And then he said that money could be used for veterans."

Waxman and Feinstein got legislation passed making it illegal to sell or even lease the property. But that didn't put an end to the rental agreements. That's because legally, the West Los Angeles VA hasn't been leasing the property; they've been sharing it.

They've used a law that says the VA can share facilities "to secure health care resources which otherwise might not be feasibly available." The ACLU lawsuit is challenging the rental agreements, too, arguing that they have nothing to do with veterans health care. At least three agreements have recently been terminated.

Raising Millions

Meanwhile, what Waxmanwants to know is where the money's gone.

"They earn extra money, which they use — they tell us — for ... VA services," says Waxman. "The reason I say, 'They tell us they use it' is [because] we've never been able to get a lot of the details ... of exactly how much money they got and how that money was used."

Where the money went may be a mystery, but NPR has been able to estimate how much money the West L.A. VA has taken in. Through the Freedom of Information Act, NPR obtained the major long-term rental agreements as well as related correspondence between the VA and members of Congress.

Some data are missing and some of the documents conflict, but it appears that over the past dozen years, the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center has taken in at least $28 million and possibly more than $40 million.

Waxman knows what he'd like them to do with the money. "There are many needs that are not being met," he says, "including housing for homeless veterans."

The VA did designate three vacant buildings on the campus to be converted to housing for disabled homeless vets. They announced that in 2007, but took no action. In 2010, the agency announced it would spend $20 million to rehabone of those buildings. It was supposed to open this year. They have yet to break ground.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

One of the most fought-over pieces of property in Los Angeles is the campus of the Veterans Affairs health care center. It is set on 400 acres in the middle of the affluent West Side, an area that contains Beverly Hills, meaning the land has long been coveted for commercial development. But it's also considered a perfect place to house some of L.A.'s 8,000 homeless veterans. So far, the VA's plans to do that have gone nowhere, even as government documents show that the West Los Angeles VA has made millions of dollars renting out chunks of its property to private enterprises.

NPR's Ina Jaffe has the story.

INA JAFFE, BYLINE: For most Los Angeles residents, the VA health care center in West L.A. is something they glimpse from their cars as they're on traffic-choked Wilshire Boulevard. From the road, it looks like a park. But within the grounds, it's the largest medical facility in the VA's health care system. This is where a veteran named Floyd Summers comes for mental health treatment.

FLOYD SUMMERS: Well, actually, I come a long distance to get here each morning by train and by bus, and I walk.

JAFFE: At the time of this interview, he was living in his truck, which was parked 70 miles away. Summers says he wanted to live right here on the West L.A. campus - the VA and some nonprofits offer transitional housing - but nothing worked out.

SUMMERS: I've been trying to get housing for such a long time that sometime I wonder if anybody's hearing me or not.

JAFFE: Suddenly, Summers provides a glimpse of why he's had trouble fitting into one of the established programs here. He abruptly stops talking. He scowls and looks around - hard to tell whether he's angry or afraid.

(SOUNDBITE OF GRUNTING)

JAFFE: You all right?

Summers is not all right. He hears voices and has mood swings. This started during the Vietnam War. Back then, he was a 22-year-old Army recruit stationed in Germany.

SUMMERS: At that time, I felt that something wasn't right with me, because I felt that some things was real and some things wasn't real, as if I was hallucinating.

JAFFE: Summers is one of 11 veterans with severe mental disabilities who sued the VA. They're represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of prominent L.A. law firms. Mark Rosenbaum, the legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, says they want permanent supportive housing for mentally disabled veterans like Summers right on the West L.A. campus.

MARK ROSENBAUM: To provide housing that has access to medical and psychiatric services. It's common sense.

JAFFE: Rosenbaum says his clients' severe mental disabilities make it next to impossible for them to get to the treatment to which they're legally entitled.

ROSENBAUM: You can't get medical and psychiatric services if you're living in Skid Row and you're part of a cycle of homelessness.

JAFFE: Neither the VA nor the Justice Department would speak to NPR because of the lawsuit, even though part has been dismissed. But if you try to figure out their position from what they say and do, you may come away confused. For example, in a document responding to the lawsuit, the government contends that the VA has no authority and no funding to create housing. Yet there is long-term supportive housing for homeless disabled veterans now under construction at another VA facility in the Los Angeles area.

Then there's the history. At one time, the sole purpose of the West L.A. campus was to house veterans. That began in the late 19th century, when a couple of prominent Californians donated the land to the federal government specifically to create a home for disabled soldiers.

CAROLINA WINSTON BARRIE: Well, this is the trolley station. They had a trolley that took them everywhere.

JAFFE: Carolina Winston Barrie is the great-great-niece of one of the land donors. She's 84 years old now. For a while, she was also part of the lawsuit, hoping to have her family's original deed enforced. She knows every inch of this place and what it used to be.

BARRIE: This was a fully functional city within the county of Los Angeles. It had everything, some - post office. We're sitting at the trolley station, 150 acres under cultivation, orange trees all over the place. You can't see an orange tree anymore.

JAFFE: What you can see, if you know where to look - and what really bothers Barrie - are the enterprises here that have nothing to do with helping veterans. She points out a few as she drives around the campus.

BARRIE: This is the Jackie Robinson baseball field. UCLA uses that. We just passed the Marriott laundry that does the laundry for the hotels.

JAFFE: We also passed the building where 20th Century Fox stores sets and a 20-acre athletic complex for an exclusive private school at the other end of the property where parking lot's full of rental cars and school buses. The West Los Angeles VA has made more than a dozen of these long-term rental deals, most of which have nothing to do with services for veterans.

REPRESENTATIVE HENRY WAXMAN: The West L.A. VA was in business for itself.

JAFFE: That's Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman. He's been trying to protect the West Los Angeles VA from commercialization for years. During the Bush administration, there were proposals for condos, office towers, a shopping mall. Waxman went to talk to then-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson.

WAXMAN: Secretary Nicholson told me when I went to meet with him that he was a real estate developer, and this was prime real estate and that we could make a lot of money by commercializing it, selling it off and letting people build whatever they wanted to build. And then he said that money could be used for veterans.

JAFFE: Waxman and Senator Dianne Feinstein got legislation passed making it illegal to sell or even lease the property. But that didn't put an end to the rental agreements. That's because legally, the West L.A. VA hasn't been leasing the property. They've been sharing it. They used a law that says the VA can share facilities, quote, "to secure health care resources which otherwise might not be feasibly available." The ACLU lawsuit is challenging the rental agreements, too, and at least three have recently been terminated. Meanwhile, what Congressman Waxman wants to know is: What's happened to the money from the rental deals?

WAXMAN: They earn extra money, which they use - they tell us - for the VA services. The reason I say they tell us they use it is we've never been able to get a lot of the details of exactly where that - how much money they got and how that money was used.

JAFFE: How the money was used may be a mystery, but we can estimate how much money has come in. Through the Freedom of Information Act, NPR obtained the major long-term rental agreements, as well as related correspondence between the VA and members of Congress. Some data are missing and some of the documents conflict, but our estimate suggests that over the past dozen years, the VA Health Care Center of West Los Angeles has taken in at least $28 million, and possibly more than $40 million. Waxman knows what he'd like them to do with the money.

There are many needs that are not being met, including housing for homeless veterans.

The VA has designated three vacant buildings on the West L.A. campus to be converted to housing for disabled homeless vets. They announced that in 2007, though they took no action. In 2010, the agency announced they would spend $20 million rehabbing one of those buildings. It was supposed to open this year. They have yet to break ground. Ina Jaffe, NPR News.

MONTAGNE: And you can see vintage photos of the V.A.'s Old Soldiers Home at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.